apparently the main purpose of speaker spikes are to couple (not de-couple) the speakers to the floor. From what I've read you should use spikes when placing floorstanders on cement or tile floors, or speaker stands on hard floors like that. so in other words, connection between speaker and rigid surface. if on the other hand you're putting the speaker on a table or speaker stand or wood floor, you'll want to place it on rubber feet, or bitumen, or some similar soft material, to prevent the wood from resonating with the speakers.
I recommend trying both coupling and de-coupling. Both have they're uses regardless of floor surface.
Spikes can help to keep your speakers from wobbles that smear the high frequencies and may also give increased bass (not always in a desirable way). They also provide an easy way to keep your speakers exactly straight and level on uneven surfaces.
Rubber feet or other decoupling stops the rest of the building 'singing' with the low frequencies but this can be useful with SOME speakers. My experience is that HF suffers without a solid footing.
I have used a combination before: Large floorstanders with spikes resting on heavy concrete slabs. The concrete slabs were supported by rubber 'bouncy' balls cut in half. The balls were under so much compression that the HF didn't really change.
Speaking of balls under compression .......
Don't put spikes into your wife's laminate flooring! 😀
Spikes can help to keep your speakers from wobbles that smear the high frequencies and may also give increased bass (not always in a desirable way). They also provide an easy way to keep your speakers exactly straight and level on uneven surfaces.
Rubber feet or other decoupling stops the rest of the building 'singing' with the low frequencies but this can be useful with SOME speakers. My experience is that HF suffers without a solid footing.
I have used a combination before: Large floorstanders with spikes resting on heavy concrete slabs. The concrete slabs were supported by rubber 'bouncy' balls cut in half. The balls were under so much compression that the HF didn't really change.
Speaking of balls under compression .......
Don't put spikes into your wife's laminate flooring! 😀
Sorry to bring this back from the dead again....what about spikes for speaker stands? Currently thinking of getting some concrete blocks and stacking them to make a stand...what would be the correct spikes/decoupling thing to use? Note, this is all going to be on a hardwood floor. Also, what kind of material should I have between the base of the speaker and the stand? Foam? Rubber?
Thanks, Brendan
Thanks, Brendan
Well, If you ask me, I think the main purpose of spikes is to make it possible for hi-fi dealers to earn some extra cash by charging hilariously much for vitually nothing. 😉
If you are building some stands out of a very dense and heavy material (like your concrete blocks) then I do not believe that it will really matter what you use to decouple the stands from the hardwood floor. Noticeable resonances from the speakers are not really going to travel through concrete and be heard through the hardwood flooring. Personally I would be too afraid of hurting the wood, so I would put some old carpet on the bottom of your stands, or some of those felt shoes that you can put on chairs.
Here is a link for you if you choose the felt pads
Here is a link for you if you choose the felt pads
agreed, hence the felt pads 😉
As Sonusthree suggested, you can use the spikes to between the loudspeaker and the concrete stands acting as a coupler. However, I would decouple the stands from the hardwood flooring with the felt pads 😀
setting a bookshelf speaker on spikes let the shelf resonate less.
This is from personal experience and I would call that 'decoupling'. 😕
regards
This is from personal experience and I would call that 'decoupling'. 😕
regards
hmm...
I could be wrong as I am a bit newer to this forum, but I believe that the spikes help give a solid connection between the speaker cabinet and the surface that it is resting on. This in effect "couples" the two objects together with respect to their resonating abilities. Doing the opposite (such as using a dampener of some sort) would separate the connection between the two objects, which will stop the resonances from passing into one another. This in effect "decouples" the two objects' resonant ability.
If you are setting the speakers on a wood shelf, using spikes would cause the cabinet resonances to pass through the spikes and into the shelf, thus potentially having the shelf "sing", thus coupling them together. At least that is my understanding of it.
yes, I would follow that reasoning, but the visible effect seems oppositional.
Especially if there are lots of glasses on the shelf which sing an any vibration.
regards
Especially if there are lots of glasses on the shelf which sing an any vibration.
regards
I;m deciding on plain rubber hockey pucks...one per corner...and maybe some of the carpet padding between the speakers and the stand....does that seem fine?
Brendan
Brendan
I think that having the carpet or rubber pucks between the speaker cabinet and the stand would take the point away from having concrete stands... you WANT spikes between the speaker cabinet and the stand so that the rigidity of the stands helps to reduce cabinet resonance. You would want to have the pucks or carpet padding in between the stands and the hardwood flooring.
Well, I'm no expert but...
I agree with the general thrust of this thread. For the most part, you want the speakers rigidly connected to the floor or the stand to prevent any lost motion. But there are a few exceptions when you want isolation.
For isolation, I suggest -
1.) thin rubber sheets. Most building supply store have very thin rubber sheets that are either used under carpet or hardwood floors as cushioning. Alternately, it is used in roofing to create a waterproof membrane between the roof and the roofing surface material (like tar).
2.) in the same vein, there is also a thin foam (usually green) that is meant to be a padding under hardwood floors. Cheap enough, and thin enough, durable enough, and it should do fine under compression.
3.) the fabric store (also hobby shops)-
- 3a) well, nothing like good old fabric between the stand and the floor to isolate the stand and protect the floor.
-3b) self-stick felt sheets. Most fabric store or on-lime fabic sources have peel'n'stick felt sheets in 10" x 12" or 12" x 18" sizes.
-3c) self-stick and plain 2mil foam sheets. Like above, you can get thin 2 mil dense closed cell craft foam sheets that make decent speaker gaskets, and could easily be put on the bottom of the speaker stand to isolate and protect the floor.
back to building supplies -
There is a type of acoustic rubber-ish membrane that is place in wall and between layers of sound proofing.
Similar to -
E-Cousti Membrane -
http://www.sheffins.co.uk/show_prod.asp?ProdID=946&CatID=40&SubCatID=91
and similar products. This could easily be placed under the base of a stand.
Also, Part Express has an assortment of acoustical membranes made from rubber, vinyl, and abs to isolate and dampen vibration.
If you simply want the thinnest layer to prevent scratches to the floor and offer a degree of vibration resistence, the bottom of the stand, stone, cement, could be sprayed with liquid plastic, which is a rubber-like spray similar to the rubber coating found on screwdriver and pliers handles.
Finally, let's not forget the assorted rubber-ish acoustic isolation pad that are available specifically for audio applications- polypods, Foculpods, superpods, and the rest.
For what it's worth.
Steve/bluewizard
I agree with the general thrust of this thread. For the most part, you want the speakers rigidly connected to the floor or the stand to prevent any lost motion. But there are a few exceptions when you want isolation.
For isolation, I suggest -
1.) thin rubber sheets. Most building supply store have very thin rubber sheets that are either used under carpet or hardwood floors as cushioning. Alternately, it is used in roofing to create a waterproof membrane between the roof and the roofing surface material (like tar).
2.) in the same vein, there is also a thin foam (usually green) that is meant to be a padding under hardwood floors. Cheap enough, and thin enough, durable enough, and it should do fine under compression.
3.) the fabric store (also hobby shops)-
- 3a) well, nothing like good old fabric between the stand and the floor to isolate the stand and protect the floor.
-3b) self-stick felt sheets. Most fabric store or on-lime fabic sources have peel'n'stick felt sheets in 10" x 12" or 12" x 18" sizes.
-3c) self-stick and plain 2mil foam sheets. Like above, you can get thin 2 mil dense closed cell craft foam sheets that make decent speaker gaskets, and could easily be put on the bottom of the speaker stand to isolate and protect the floor.
back to building supplies -
There is a type of acoustic rubber-ish membrane that is place in wall and between layers of sound proofing.
Similar to -
E-Cousti Membrane -
http://www.sheffins.co.uk/show_prod.asp?ProdID=946&CatID=40&SubCatID=91
and similar products. This could easily be placed under the base of a stand.
Also, Part Express has an assortment of acoustical membranes made from rubber, vinyl, and abs to isolate and dampen vibration.
If you simply want the thinnest layer to prevent scratches to the floor and offer a degree of vibration resistence, the bottom of the stand, stone, cement, could be sprayed with liquid plastic, which is a rubber-like spray similar to the rubber coating found on screwdriver and pliers handles.
Finally, let's not forget the assorted rubber-ish acoustic isolation pad that are available specifically for audio applications- polypods, Foculpods, superpods, and the rest.
For what it's worth.
Steve/bluewizard
Spikes (even conical ones) are most useful on thick carpet, where they provide much more stability.
There is no sense in using spikes on a concrete or tile floor, a better method then is felt pads
There is no sense in using spikes on a concrete or tile floor, a better method then is felt pads
explanation?
You say that you think you experience the opposite? Thats sure sounds strange, but perhaps it is not.
Let us assume that the self resonance of the shelf was lowered because of the stronger coupling to the speaker. (increased body mass -> lowered resonance frequency). Now, bookshelf speakers usually dont have much energy in the lowest octave, so perhaps the speaker + spikes combo were less likely to excite the shelf fundamental.
Just a thought...
Juergen Knoop said:
You say that you think you experience the opposite? Thats sure sounds strange, but perhaps it is not.
Let us assume that the self resonance of the shelf was lowered because of the stronger coupling to the speaker. (increased body mass -> lowered resonance frequency). Now, bookshelf speakers usually dont have much energy in the lowest octave, so perhaps the speaker + spikes combo were less likely to excite the shelf fundamental.
Just a thought...
Hi,
The point contact of a spike stops energy from the speaker cabinet coupling to the floor. In my case with wooden floorboards with 18in free space underneath them they are essential and make a big difference.
The point contact of a spike stops energy from the speaker cabinet coupling to the floor. In my case with wooden floorboards with 18in free space underneath them they are essential and make a big difference.
any rigid connection - spikes, cones, steel, concrete, etc. - will couple or transmit vibrational frequencies energy with minimal loss.
Beautiful example of this is the metal balls on string toy: swing one and the last in line shoots off, swings back down and the first one then shoots off, etc. repeating for quite some time as there is little energy loss in this system. Considering this example it is worth noting the contact surface between two spheres is extremely small, theoretically a point, yet still transmits energy with little loss. The corollory is the same: large rigid contact surfaces will transmit energy just as effeciently.
Any compliant connection - rubber, foam, carpet - will decouple vibrational frequencies energy causing great loss or energy transformation according to Newtons laws, in this case into energy of lower potential: low level heat.
This is the principle of all passive vibration and acoustic noise reduction systems.
Spikes or cones or any loudspeaker foot, aranged in a triangle, creates a fundamentally balanced mount on any surface material, rigid or compliant.
The conclusions then are:
- loudspeaker feet spikes onto rigid surface (concrete, granite, metal) couple (transmit) vibrational energy.
- loudspeaker feet spikes onto compliant surface (rubber, foam, carpet) decouple (stop, sort of) vibrational energy.
Wood floors pose difficulty, as wood, an anisotropic material, can be both rigid or compliant to vibrational energy transmittal.
The shape of the loudspeaker feet - spikes, cones, spheres, balls, pucks - is almost irrelevant in (de)coupling vibrational energy. The feet shape is relevant to loudspeaker balance, which can have affect on vibrational energy transferral.
There are other issues, but they get very complex: natural frequency, oscillation coupling and time domain.
Everything has a natural frequency, related to its potential energy. If vibrational or acoustic energy frequencies or for example a dynamic component like a motor spins at the natural frequency of something coupled to it, oscillation coupling occurs and it is catastrophic. Beautiful example of this is the shattering wine glass.
Oscillation coupling in practice is more an issue with dynamic components such as motors but can occur when multiple vibration reduction (decoupling in our discussion) levels are used. For example, a louspeaker mounted on a rubber sheet on a concrete block mounted on rubber balls, etc. If the effective damping of the compliant mounts sees sympathetic energy frequencies one can act like a rigid body.
But all of this is dependant on time domain, which is really getting away from the question of speaker spikes' purpose.
Beautiful example of this is the metal balls on string toy: swing one and the last in line shoots off, swings back down and the first one then shoots off, etc. repeating for quite some time as there is little energy loss in this system. Considering this example it is worth noting the contact surface between two spheres is extremely small, theoretically a point, yet still transmits energy with little loss. The corollory is the same: large rigid contact surfaces will transmit energy just as effeciently.
Any compliant connection - rubber, foam, carpet - will decouple vibrational frequencies energy causing great loss or energy transformation according to Newtons laws, in this case into energy of lower potential: low level heat.
This is the principle of all passive vibration and acoustic noise reduction systems.
Spikes or cones or any loudspeaker foot, aranged in a triangle, creates a fundamentally balanced mount on any surface material, rigid or compliant.
The conclusions then are:
- loudspeaker feet spikes onto rigid surface (concrete, granite, metal) couple (transmit) vibrational energy.
- loudspeaker feet spikes onto compliant surface (rubber, foam, carpet) decouple (stop, sort of) vibrational energy.
Wood floors pose difficulty, as wood, an anisotropic material, can be both rigid or compliant to vibrational energy transmittal.
The shape of the loudspeaker feet - spikes, cones, spheres, balls, pucks - is almost irrelevant in (de)coupling vibrational energy. The feet shape is relevant to loudspeaker balance, which can have affect on vibrational energy transferral.
There are other issues, but they get very complex: natural frequency, oscillation coupling and time domain.
Everything has a natural frequency, related to its potential energy. If vibrational or acoustic energy frequencies or for example a dynamic component like a motor spins at the natural frequency of something coupled to it, oscillation coupling occurs and it is catastrophic. Beautiful example of this is the shattering wine glass.
Oscillation coupling in practice is more an issue with dynamic components such as motors but can occur when multiple vibration reduction (decoupling in our discussion) levels are used. For example, a louspeaker mounted on a rubber sheet on a concrete block mounted on rubber balls, etc. If the effective damping of the compliant mounts sees sympathetic energy frequencies one can act like a rigid body.
But all of this is dependant on time domain, which is really getting away from the question of speaker spikes' purpose.
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